倫勃朗 | 館藏 | 倫敦國家美術館·穿著田園服飾的薩斯基亞

National Gallery is home to the nation's paintings over 2,000 works of art owned by you During the Masterpiece Tour, the paintings leave their walls and travel the length and breadth of the country to visit communities face-to-face and create new relationships with centuries-old art And this year's painting is an intimate portrait by Rembrandt And in this short film, we'll explore some of the stories contained within it But before we do, let's take a moment to just look What do you see? A young woman with light red hair gazes out, not quite at us, but perhaps to a person to our right Her elaborate green dress is embroidered with gold Her cream satin petticoat beneath edged with lace In her left hand, an overflowing bouquet of flowers And her right grips a stick entwined with plants Two things loom large in this painting One is that it's by Rembrandt one of the most renowned painters of the last 400 years And the other is that this is a painting of his wife Saskia To help us find out more about this painting I am joined by Laura Llewellyn from the Curatorial Department Hello Laura Hello Ed So who is Saskia? Saskia was the cousin of Hendrik Eulenberg in whose house Rembrandt lived and worked during his first years in Amsterdam Eulenberg was a dealer and helped Rembrandt to really establish himself on the Amsterdam scene Saskia and Rembrandt spent just under 10 years of their life together before Saskia's untimely death in 1641 And in many ways, these were the most exhilarating years of Rembrandt's entire career There was clearly enormous love between the two But that being said, there was also great heartbreak The pair lost three children before they reached the age of two months But during their years together, Rembrandt painted and drew Saskia continuously We have drawings of her in domestic settings having her hair brushed by a maid convalescing in bed reading a book or even just staring out to meet the painter's gaze We have more formal portraits of her dressed in high-to-fashion or even in kind of fancy dress with big wide-brimmed hats and feathers in her hair Some people think that there's an inconsistency from one to the next in terms of her features and the likeness And that really what is happening is that Saskia is kind of pervading Rembrandt's understanding of womanhood So every time he paints a woman he somehow includes Saskia This painting was very likely painted in 1635 Saskia's about 21 And the couple around this time find out that they're pregnant for the first time Title of the painting says that she's in Arcadian dress What is that? Arcadia is actually a mountainous region on the Greek mainland which was mythologized by Greek and Roman poets of the classical era as a kind of earthly paradise And during Rembrandt's time the idea of Arcadia was enormously popular among elite circles of the Dutch people And we can really see this in poetry, literature, stage plays and of course art of the day The garments that Saskia is wearing in Rembrandt's picture really chime with images of shepherds and shepherdesses that you see in slightly earlier representations of Arcadia But I think it's worth pointing out at this moment in time that the title that you've just alluded to is ours We have applied it to the painting here at the National Gallery and in the 21st century When the painting first arrived at the Gallery it was called Flora Flora is the Roman goddess of spring And still to this day there is a tussle between scholars about really what Rembrandt is trying to depict here Does the actual way in which Rembrandt has painted this give us some ideas about what he was really interested in in this painting or what he wants us to focus on in particular Yeah, well, I don't know about you But for me, when I look at this painting I always find my eye being drawn back time and time again over the costume elements and the flowers And really I never focus on her face for any length of time And it's fairly simply painted compared to other elements of the painting in the costume and also in the bouquet of flowers Rembrandt is really showing off his brush strokes And in areas you've got this lovely impasto which is just thick paint where the surface of the painting almost has texture I love this flash of light which hits the front of her dress which really helps our eye to move up towards this wonderful bouquet of flowers OK, so flowers are a huge feature of 17th century Dutch art And in a lot of the still lives each individual flower has a very specific meaning Is that the same with this painting? Does each flower have a particular meaning or would that be us reading too much into it? Some of the flowers have been identified but not all of them In the wreath in her hair, for example we can see forget-me-nots and scarlet pimpernels Down in her staff we've got these wonderful tendrils of ivy which kind of wrap around it And in this fabulous bouquet we can see carnations cuckoo flowers, marigolds, buttercups and of course tulips And the painting was in fact painted right in the middle of the moment that historians have now dubbed tulip mania which is when the Dutch developed a veritable obsession with tulips They were traded and sold to collectors as luxury items So certainly the tulip had a kind of currency for Rembrandt and his peers But I think the flowers here are depicted more as a general celebration of nature's beauty and bounty and the associated themes of fertility and youth So is this idea that she's in Arcadian dress or is personifying flora really important to what Rembrandt's trying to get across here or is it more an excuse for elaborate fancy dress? I think that in Rembrandt's time there was a real taste for dressing up in fancy dress Just a bit like today when everyone gets excited on Halloween Rembrandt really enjoyed using fanciful costume in his paintings I think for him it was about removing the individual With a portrait you might find yourself restricted by the concerns of capturing an exact likeness or really getting the physiognomy is exactly right By placing the figure in this kind of historic dress and therefore sort of removing them from our times Rembrandt has more of an opportunity to explore an idea or a psychological state And in this case I think it's that of strong female self-assuredness And there's an added poignancy knowing that there are difficulties and heartbreak ahead for Rembrandt and Saskia Despite the hundreds of years between us now and when this painting was made it's still very clear that this is an image of someone who was very much loved And it's rather wonderful that idea persists even though all the people involved in creating it have now gone And I suppose it makes you think about the power of the images we can create of our own loved ones